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A new charter school will be opening its doors in Canton in the 2022-2023 school year.

The Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board last week approved SR1’s application to open the SR1 College Preparatory and STEM Academy. The school will serve kindergarten and first grade in its opening year, then expand each year after to serve kindergarten through fifth grade. The school would serve 450 students once expansion is complete.

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Tamu Green, founder of SR1 (Scientific Research)

SR1 (Scientific Research) was founded by Tamu Green in 2005 and collaborates with public and private partners to decrease disparities in Mississippi, specifically among minorities. The group applied to open a school in 2017, 2018 and 2019 and was denied, but has since worked with the board to address deficiencies.

The board also denied an application by Voices for Education to open a school in the North Bolivar Consolidated School District.

The board followed the recommendations of School Works, an educational consulting group out of Massachusetts hired to evaluate the applications.

Charters are public schools that do not charge tuition, and are held to the same academic and accountability standards as traditional public schools. By law, charter schools have the capacity for more flexibility for teachers and administrators when it comes to student instruction. Unlike traditional public schools, charters do not have school boards or operate under a local school district, although they are funded by school districts based on their enrollment.

Charter schools can apply directly to the authorizer board if they’re planning to open in a D or F district. If an operator wants to open in an A, B, or C district, they need to get approval from the local school board.

Each year the authorizer board goes through a months-long process to screen potential operators and grant them the authority to open a school in Mississippi. This year the timeline for the 2020 application cycle has been slightly pushed back because of the pandemic.

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Mississippi has fewer persuadable voters per capita than any other state. Can Mike Espy persuade the unpersuadable to win the Senate race?

Mississippi is nicknamed the hospitality state, but when it comes to voting, it is the state of entrenchment.

Mississippi is the most inelastic state in the nation when it comes to voting, according to a study by the FiveThirtyEight political blog. In simpler terms, the hospitality state has fewer persuadable voters per capita than any state in the nation. Only the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., a Democratic stronghold, has fewer persuadable voters, based on the updated study.

The lack of persuadable voters highlights the obstacles faced in Mississippi by Democratic candidates and Mike Espy, specifically, in his race against Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. In a sense, all the momentum appears to be on Espy’s side. He has raised far more money than Hyde-Smith this year and is dominating the television airwaves across the state.

Yet the Cook Political Report, a national political website that forecasts elections, ranks the Mississippi Senate race in the “solid Republican” category. The aforementioned FiveThirtyEight gives Hyde-Smith a 91% chance of winning.

The national forecasters give Democratic Senate candidates in Kansas, Montana and Alaska better odds of winning than they give Espy. What gives? Are those states more Democratic than Mississippi? In the 2016 presidential election, Trump won Mississippi by 18%, compared to more than 20% in Montana and Kansas and by almost 15% in Alaska.

The issue, according to FiveThirtyEight, is not that Mississippi is more Republican than those states, but that it has fewer voters willing to cross party lines. The blog says elastic voters are more likely to be swayed by political events — the economy, a scandal, a pandemic.

Perhaps the most disturbing trend here is how inelastic the country is as a whole. The study describes Mississippi and many other Southern states as having “ lots of white evangelical Protestants and white voters with conservative views on racial issues who rarely if ever vote for Democratic candidates.” The study identifies Kansas, Montana and Alaska as very white states, but “not as evangelical or racially conservative.”

Another issue that might make Mississippi a little different than states like Kansas is that Mississippi also has a high number of Democrats who also are difficult to persuade to cross party lines. Generally speaking, the vast majority of those unpersuadable Democrats are Black voters.

While not giving some of the Southern Democratic Senate candidates as much of a chance as it gives the Democrats in Kansas, Montana and Alaska, FiveThirtyEight does say the high percentage of Black voters in those Southern states gives Democrats a chance in an election cycle where it appears all the momentum is on the side of the Democrats.

A key caveat for Espy, though, is that there are more persuadable Republicans than Democrats in Mississippi. To win in November, Espy has to entice people to the polls who do not normally vote.

Many believe these are progressives who have not been enthused with the generally conservative Democrats who have run for statewide office in Mississippi. Espy, who has largely centered his 2020 campaign on race and social justice, has tried to attract those voters by embracing the national Democratic ticket to an extent that most Mississippi Democratic statewide candidates have not in past election years.

In addition, Espy must convince a small percentage of those Mississippi Republican voters to come over to his camp. Espy is trying to do that with recent ads touting the need to change the state’s trajectory to ensure young people do not leave the state, and by highlighting his willingness to work across party lines, like he did in the 1980s and 90s with Republicans like Sen. Thad Cochran and President Ronald Reagan.

To win, Espy must do both of those things: inspire new, mostly younger progressives and convince some of those traditionally unpersuadable Republicans.

Espy maintains that he will win if Black voters in the Nov. 3 election make up 35.5% of the total vote, and that if he increases his share of the white vote from the 18% he garnered in his 2018 Senate special election against Hyde-Smith to 22%. Based on early absentee voting numbers, there is a strong likelihood that the African American turnout will be higher than the 32.5% the Espy campaign says he earned in the 2018 special election.

If that’s the case, that might leave Espy just needing to persuade those unpersuadable Mississippi voters to win. It’s a tall task, but time will tell if it’s possible.

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The pandemic continues to play havoc with college football — Southern Miss football, in particular.

The Golden Eagles’ scheduled Saturday game with UTEP at El Paso has been postponed indefinitely because of COVID-19 cases within the Southern Miss team.

This makes the second straight week, Southern Miss will not play because of the pandemic. The Oct. 10 Florida Atlantic (FAU) Conference USA game, which was scheduled to be played in Hattiesburg, was also postponed — that one because of COVID-19 issues within the FAU program.

Jeremy McClain

“The health and safety of everyone involved continues to be our guiding force which made the decision to postpone the game the appropriate one,” USM athletic director Jeremy McClain said. “We are disappointed for our student-athletes who will not get a chance to participate for a second straight weekend, however, we will work with UTEP, in conjunction with Conference USA to reschedule this game for later this season.”

Earlier this week, McClain said he hoped the FAU game could be rescheduled at the end of the regular season, currently scheduled to end with a Nov. 27 game at UAB. That FAU-USM game presumably would be played the first weekend in December.

Southern Miss has not played since 41-31 victory over North Texas on Oct. 3 at Denton, Texas. The Eagles’ next scheduled game is against Hugh Freeze-coached Liberty University Oct. 24 at Lynchburg, Va.

In all, Southern Miss has had seven scheduling changes forced by the pandemic for a season that is now seven weeks old.

Nationwide, 32 NCAA Division I games have been postponed or canceled because of the pandemic.

Two Southeastern Conference games, scheduled for Saturday, have been postponed: LSU at Florida, and Vanderbilt at Missouri. Both have been tentatively rescheduled for Dec. 12.

All this football scheduling news comes amid news of a resurgence of COVID-19 cases around the country, including Mississippi.

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Democrat Mike Espy had $3.17 million cash on hand at the end of September, while Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith had nearly $1.5 million.

Reports filed Thursday show Democratic challenger Mike Espy outraised incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith more than 4-to-1 between July and September.

Espy raised more than $4 million for the quarter, bringing his total for the race to $5.3 million. Hyde-Smith raised less than $815,000 for the quarter, and $2.85 million total.

Espy’s report showed he had $3.17 million cash on hand at the end of September. Hyde-Smith’s showed she had nearly $1.5 million.

Espy appears to be using his more than 2-to-1 cash advantage by vastly out-advertising Hyde-Smith so far in the critical home stretch before the Nov. 3 election, flooding the airwaves across Mississippi with his messaging. Espy this week is spending $1.01 million on television and radio ads, according to FCC reports, compared to Hyde-Smith spending just $147,000.

Espy’s latest influx of cash is part of a national wave of mostly small donations to Democratic congressional campaigns after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, although Espy has outraised Hyde-Smith in all but one reporting period this election cycle.

“This is a well-funded campaign,” Espy said this week, but he said that more importantly, his is a well-organized campaign that can quickly put the influx of money to use in getting his message out and turning out voters.

“We have the best data set, numbers and algorithms,” Espy said. “… There are 100,000 African Americans in Mississippi who haven’t voted since President Obama in 2008. We know who they are, have their emails and cell numbers and addresses. We have 40 to 50 people out knocking on doors — of course, wearing Espy for Senate masks and gloves and PPE.”

Espy said he believes his message is also reaching, and resonating with, white voters.

“I want to represent all of Mississippi,” Espy said, repeating a refrain he’s used since he announced his candidacy in 2019.

Hyde-Smith’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Austin Barbour, a state and national GOP strategist and fundraiser, said Espy’s record fundraising hauls will be a boon to his campaign, but questioned whether it would be enough to overcome Hyde-Smith’s lead in a very red state.

“Money moves the needle, yes — allows you to put your message out,” Barbour said. “But the president (Trump) is going to get a tremendous turnout in Mississippi, and Sen. Hyde-Smith is going to benefit from that massive turnout. That allows her campaign not to have to rely so much on campaign funds for television.”

Barbour continued: “What she’s got to do in these closing three weeks is with the dollars she has, she has to remind, not show but remind, voters, ‘I’m the conservative,’ and Mike Espy representing Mississippi would be a liberal member of the Senate trying to represent a conservative state … I think it’s a really easy thing to do because of her record, and because of the things Mike Espy has campaigned on, and Mike Espy would put things that much closer to Democrats having a majority in the Senate.”

Barbour said Espy’s raising and spending has been “unheard of for a Democrat” in Mississippi in recent history, but noted most of the bounty is from the national “Democratic machine” and not a groundswell of support in the state.

Barbour said that in the pandemic, with limits on in-person campaigning and door knocking, television and other broadcast advertising will likely be a key factor in the race.

“I think you could argue more people are watching television, glued to it,” Barbour said. “It can be particularly effective in Mississippi because we are not overwhelmed with TV campaign ads like people in Georgia or South Carolina or Arizona are.”

Michael Rejebian, who has worked on multiple campaigns, said a sizable fundraising advantage for a Democrat can help level the playing field in a deep red state like Mississippi.

“The best problem any campaign can have is how to spend money you may not have anticipated having,” said Rejebian, who worked on Democrat Jim Hood’s 2019 gubernatorial campaign that was significantly outraised by eventual winner Republican Tate Reeves.

“Putting that money into an air and ground war to attract undecided voters and increase turnout among supporters is crucial as a campaign enters the final weeks. You can increase your TV, radio, digital, mail and field operations, which certainly helps level the playing field when you’re running as a Democrat in a deep red state. The challenges are still there, of course, but they may not look so daunting when your bank account is healthy.”

Mississippi State University political scientist Marty Wiseman said it is highly unusual in Mississippi for a Democratic candidate to outraise a Republican opponent.

“It is unheard of for a Republican incumbent in Mississippi to be outraised by a challenger,” Wiseman said. “I guess her campaign feels the money is not necessary.”

Instead of focusing primarily on television and internet advertising, Wiseman said Espy should invest in “putting boots on the ground” in Democratic strongholds to turn out voters.

“That takes a lot of work,” he said, but concluded Espy might have a chance based on what appears to be many Republicans taking the race for granted and Hyde-Smith’s often sparse campaigning.

But he cautioned: “You see time and time again in Mississippi where the Democratic candidate looks promising, but then the Democratic candidate ends up claiming a moral victory with 47% of the vote.”

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